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04/30/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/29/2024 22:02

APNIC EC makes moratorium on new NIRs permanent

There will be no new National Internet Registries (NIRs) in the APNIC region following a decision from the APNIC Executive Council (EC) to make the existing 12-year moratorium on new NIR applications permanent.

At its recent meeting in Bangkok in February, the EC resolved to deprecate the document 'APNIC-104 Criteria for the recognition of NIRs in the APNIC region' regarding new NIR applicants, with immediate effect.

Importantly, the change will not affect the existing NIRs :

  • APJII (ID)
  • CNNIC (CN)
  • IRINN (IN)
  • JPNIC (JP)
  • KISA (KR)
  • TWNIC (TW)
  • VNNIC (VN)

NIRs are a historical and unique element of the Asia Pacific technical community, with some predating APNIC. The APNIC NIR structure was set up in 1996, with the intention to support addressing services in local communities with customized service in local languages and currency.

NIRs are not run by APNIC. They are separate, non-profit entities, incorporated according to the laws of where they are based, and have their own memberships. NIRs can have their own policies that apply to their members, but those policies must not conflict with regional and global address policies. Existing NIRs must have interoperable systems with APNIC and must, to the extent permitted by local laws, guarantee freedom of network operators in their economy to choose between APNIC and the NIR.

In the past, particularly before and during IPv4 exhaustion, the NIR model provided important support to a fast-growing Internet with high demand for number resources and registry services.

However, since the original moratorium on new NIR applications was passed in February 2012, the economic conditions and benefits for the establishment of new NIRs have declined.

As such, the EC determined that establishing new NIRs was no longer suitable.

More information on NIRs is available on the APNIC website.

The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of APNIC. Please note a Code of Conduct applies to this blog.